NOTE, BOBBYSIX HAS MOVED. PLEASE VISIT OUR NEW SITE INSTEAD, WHERE YOU WILL FIND SO MUCH AWESOME CONTENT THAT YOUR EYES WON'T KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FIRST: SOMETHINGYOUSAID.COM
Showing posts with label laura imbruglia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laura imbruglia. Show all posts
LAURA IMBRUGLIA
SARAH KELLY
The Excelsior, Surry Hills
04/08/10
August sees a Laura Imbruglia residency at The Excelsior in Sydney’s Surry Hills, with every Wednesday offering up a different theme. The opening night of this run was entitled ‘Solo Laura’ and will be followed by Country Laura, Band Laura and, lastly and maybe most intriguingly, Karaoke Laura.
While the last-minute cancellation of support act, the wonderful Camilla Hill, through illness, was a disappointment, her shoes were ably filled by Sarah Kelly from redsunband. Perched onstage with a guitar, Kelly’s nuanced voice was spellbinding. At times delicate, sometimes with a strained beauty, her textured vocal filled the room and added to an already intimate atmosphere.
Battling through foldback problems and admitting to being a little nervous, Laura Imbruglia put on a typically unpretentious and charming show. Armed with an acoustic guitar, she rattled off tracks from her two long-players. Thanks to her knack of penning superb lyrics, a set from Imbruglia is a collection of well-rounded tales that offer a spectrum of ideas and emotions. One minute she sings about the misery of dating an older man, the next she is yearning for unobtainable love. In Home Sweet Home she talks about being curmudgeonly beyond her years, while in My Dream of a Magical Washing Machine she asks, “What did I drink last night? What did I smoke last night? It messed with my head.” Oldie-but-really-goodie It’s Getting Worse remains a delightfully sweet love song, while You’re a Parasitic Germ lands at the other end of the scale.
The next three weeks seem set to demonstrate that, as well as having many sides to her storytelling ability, Laura Imbruglia can mix it up musically. If you appreciate a fine combination of wit and melancholy, if you are a country fan, a rocker, or just want to get up on stage and belt out some Meatloaf, you should head along to one of these Wednesday night shows and support one of Sydney’s most intelligent songwriters.
When this reviewer was a teenager, he would buy an album on vinyl from his local record shop, then rush home and play it while studying every square inch of the cover and inlay sleeve. Nowadays, as most music is created to be consumed at the push of a button, being able to take joy in an album’s cover art is a sadly rare occurrence.
Hooray then, for Laura Imbruglia, whose long-awaited sophomore long-player comes complete with a mini, Mad-esque comic book, which, as well as being fun, is also a pretty decent indicator that the record is going to be a winner. Well, if she puts this much effort into the liner notes, then you just know the album has been lovingly created.
Indeed, two years in the making, The Lighter Side Of… is a fine offering. Throughout the country, power-pop and balladry there is an impressive emotional depth to Imbruglia’s subject matter, which often finds her lovelorn and melancholy. However, on this heartbreak-themed album, her typically witty lyricism is still evident too, like on her lament to dating an older man, “I can handle a younger man with a house that’s a bit messy/The trade off is his skin has elasticity.” Importantly though, the laughs are not throwaway, but rather her acerbic humour creates shards of light that make the darker moments all the more touching.
Emotionally weighty and sad, with healthy doses of laughter just at the right times, the sarcastically-titled Lighter Side Of… is a really well rounded album, on which Imbruglia proves herself to be rather wonderful at telling evocative tales of everyday heartbreak.
LAURA IMBRUGLIA THE LAURELS WIFEY Spectrum, 19/12/09
Sporting a high beard ratio, Wifey opened things up with grown-up yet still perky indie-pop, which included bits of melodica, the occasional trumpet and some pleasingly dour between-song banter.
The Laurels rarely fail to impress and tonight’s show offered a typically awesome barrage of psychedelic/shoegazey noise. From a stage littered with pedals, the sound really was massive and - importantly - within the all-out sonic attack were some killer songs, as two vocalists shared lead duties. Outstanding stuff.
It’s been a quiet year for Laura Imbruglia, gig wise, as she has been busy putting together her second album, The Lighter Side Of…, which is due for release in February. In fact, this was her only headline outing of 2009, so she made the most of it by inviting a host of special guests to join her in showcasing plenty of new material.
Backed by a band featuring Ben James from Talons on drums and long-time bass player Stiff, and alternating between electric and acoustic guitar, she opened with new song Pauly before Surly was followed by another newie, the country-tinged and wonderfully-titled You’re a Parasitic Germ. Joined by Sarah Kelly from theredsunband, she showed a new dimension to her songwriting with the delicate Don’t, a stripped-back number with just one guitar and soft two female vocals. The special guests continued to punctuate the set; Rosa Agostino, aka Red Ghost, strapped on a guitar for a jaunty version of Loretta Lynn’s Fist City, which was dedicated to Tiger Woods’ wife, Youth Group’s Cameron Emerson-Elliott played guitar on current single When it All Falls Apart (And it Will) and the rest of Talons turned up for a mental and utterly brilliant cover of Salt N Pepa’s Shoop.
As well as her growingly diverse sound - she is equally happy rocking the hell out as she is in country/indie territory - the really appealing thing about Laura Imbruglia is her ability to tell a story. Far from being a series of cheap gags, the delightfully comic lines she delivers work so well because they are contextualised within honest tales that are often desperately sad and self-deprecating. Tonight proved she is an absolute gem of a songwriter, and, judging by the depth and quality of her new songs, the upcoming album is something to really look forward to.
I recently contributed to the Drum Media end of year poll in Australia. Here is an alternative version which takes into account the UK as well. Please feel free to add your own lists in the comments section:Top 10 Albums (released in the UK or Australia) 1. Myths of The Near Future - Klaxons 2. Panic Prevention - Jamie T 3. A Book Like This - Angus And Julia Stone (above) 4. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire 5. Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever - The Cribs 6. Because Of The Times - Kings Of Leon 7. Made Of Bricks - Kate Nash 8. Fur And Gold - Bat For Lashes 9. Songs For The Road – David Ford 10. Tonight At The Arizona - The Felice Brothers
Top 10 Tracks (released as part of any single/EP/album) 1. Be Safe – The Cribs 2. Golden Skans – Klaxons 3. Sheila - Jamie T 4. Ballad Of Lou The Welterweight – The Felice Brothers 5. Umbrella - Rihanna 6. Foundations – Kate Nash 7. D.A.N.C.E. – Justice 8. Brown Paper Bag – Bridezilla 9. What’s a Girl To Do? – Bat For Lashes 10. Commercial Breakdown – The Sunshine Underground
Best Gigs in Australia 1. Angus and Julia Stone – The Great Escape Festival 2. Bridezilla - Beach Road Hotel, Bondi (above) 3. Pet Shop Boys – V Festival 4. Lou Reed - The State Theatre 5. Muse – Big Day Out
Best Gigs in the UK 1. Carter USM – Brixton Academy (below) 2. Arcade Fire – The Latitude Festival 3. David Ford – Shepherds Bush Empire 4. Laura Imbruglia – Monkey Chews, Camden 5. Kings Of Leon – Brighton Centre Top 5 Films 1. Superbad 2. The Science Of Sleep 3. Knocked Up 4. American Gangster 5. Hot Fuzz
Top 5 TV Shows 1. The Mighty Boosh 2. Peep Show 3. The Biggest Loser (Australia) 4. Extreme Makeover 5. America’s Next Top Model
Top Podcasts 1. Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews – BBC Radio 5 Live 2. The Ricky Gervais Podcast
The Emperor's New Clothes Award Facebook. Listen, I haven’t seen you for about 10 years and you didn’t talk to me at school anyway; why would I want to add you as a ‘friend’ now? And stop inviting me to be a vampire.
Best Media Moments 1. The Chaser’s War On Everything getting themselves arrested in the name of comedy (above). 2. Britney Spears’ terrifying ‘comeback’ at the MTV Awards. Yikes. 3. The Biggest Loser, Australian finale.
Highlight Of The Year The glorious, long overdue ousting of Mr John Winston Howard.
Prediction For 2008 A new buzz band to appear on the scene approximately every 3 days, each with increasingly skinny jeans and ridiculous hair. Same as 2007 then.
Quote Of The Year “Rob Townsend is inane and out of touch.” An angry reader of The Argus writes in to tell it like it is.
A Personal Review of 2007 As with 2006, I was lucky enough to split my year between Australia and England and therefore witnessed the best of Britain in Sydney and vice versa. I saw great shows from English acts such as Jamie T, Plan B, Muse and Lily Allen in Sydney. In London I was delighted to spend some time with the beguiling Angus and Julia Stone as their star continued to ascend, and also caught a couple of Laura Imbruglia’s marvellous shows in London (above). I’m a big fan of Imbruglia, and I hope that 2008 brings her the recognition she deserves as an artist.
In Sydney, my favourite new band, Bridezilla, continued on their inevitable road to greatness. Seeing them grow from unsigned opening act to headliners and festival stars with an EP in the shops gave me great pride, especially as I have been championing them from the very first time I laid ears on them at Candy’s Apartment in 2006. Hopefully, they will take on the world next year. If the reception that fellow Aussie teens Operator Please received is any guide, England will welcome them with open arms if they get the opportunity to head that way.It was a year of festivals for me, as I took in Big Day Out, Laneway, V Festival, The Great Escape, The Essential Festival (in Sydney as opposed to Brighton), Cornbury (where I even took to the stage) and Latitude. Aside from the already listed highlights, there were great performances from Pixies, The Killers (who I saw two days in a row and, surprisingly, loved both times), NYPC (above), Ghostwood, Mercy Arms, Magic Numbers (twice), CSS, Jarvis Cocker (twice), Damien Rice (twice), Erin Marshall, The Young and Restless… the list goes on.
Elsewhere, I queued for 11 hours overnight to see Lou Reed, got a late, late call to review The Pretenders and was lucky enough to be in the front row of The Famous Spiegeltent for M. Ward in the beautiful Sydney summertime.Of the many interviews I was part of this year, my fascinating chat with Dolores O’Riordon (above) in a Sydney hotel is the one I am most proud of. Elsewhere, I swooned like a love-struck schoolboy when speaking down the phone from Melbourne to the exquisite Regina Spektor and laughed heartily with Caleb from Kings of Leon as he regaled me with tales of love and lust. I listened intently to the ambitious and terrifyingly intelligent Perry Farrell and, as always, enjoyed chatting to Klaxons.
I continued to pontificate in my own column in The Sports Argus every week, which continues to be compiled into a book, which will see the light of day this year after a self-imposed postponement.
Laura Imbruglia made her only UK headline appearance in Camden this week. I made sure I was in attendance:So blown away was I by Laura Imbruglia’s solo performance at The Borderline last week (you can read the full and comprehensive review of that night here or just scroll down the page a bit), I thought there would be little more I could say upon watching her at Monkey Chews a week on. And when I learnt that she was suffering from the beginnings of a bout of flu brought on by the pesky British weather, I assumed that the gig would struggle to live up to the high standards set last time round. Therefore I was absolutely delighted that, if anything, her performance this week was even more impressive than the show that wowed me a few days ago.
The quaint Camden pub was packed to the rafters for her first ever headline gig on these shores, as the puckish songwriter took the largely uninitiated crowd on a trip through her wonderfully weird, funny, sad, colourful and lateral ruminations. After opening with a Syd Barrett cover, she performed tracks from her debut album including standout songs It’s Getting Worse, Surly and Home Sweet Home, as well as “fairly new song” Bubbles.
As with last week, the gulf in quality between Imbruglia and the other artists on the bill (who were all kind of okay, but were, in order: way too affected/not as good as they thought they were/worthy but slightly dull) highlighted just what a mesmerising live performer she is. Armed just with an acoustic guitar, her typically zestful and captivating display was in no way hampered by the fact that her vocal was fighting against her illness and, as each song concluded, punters whooped and cheered their approval in a venue so intimate that it felt like the gig was taking place in someone’s living room (below).As another beguiling solo performance drew to a close, the Australian had the attentive audience in stitches with her clever lyrics about undercuts and word pronunciation in a couple of her lesser-known ditties, 1st Boyfriend and Two Cockatoos. As I said last week, not many artists find the right balance between being laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely heart-rending in their songs. I honestly believe that Laura Imbruglia does this as well as anyone in the world. Regardless of whether she is being humorous or downbeat, there is such honesty to her words that they always hit the mark, and connect on so many levels.
There are simply not enough superlatives in my vocabulary to express how wonderful her stories are, so you would do well to allow Laura Imbruglia’s music into your world so you can find out for yourself.
Here is a clip of Laura performing It’s Getting Worse at last week’s show at The Borderline:
Sydney’s Laura Imbruglia played in Central London this week. I’ve seen her a few times before, but this was the first time I’d ever seen her performing solo. Here’s the scoop:At London’s famous Borderline, Laura Imbruglia stood on a stage half the world away from home and performed tracks lifted from her excellent, eponymous debut album. Opening the evening with Surly, she instantly demonstrated her distinctive style. Reading like pages ripped straight from the diary of a slightly tangential protagonist, Imbruglia’s stories are personal, witty and peculiar yet never in the slightest contrived, and skip from being genuinely funny to touchingly emotive in a heartbeat. It is an appealing dichotomy, and not an easy formula to achieve, yet her songs manage to be droll without seeming flippant, and to be heartfelt without appearing over-sentimental. Similarly, her musical style also offers interesting juxtapositions. Classic pop sensibilities, influenced by a love of Teenage Fanclub and The Carpenters, combine with a distinctive indie edge reminiscent of Adam Green, the lyrical quirkiness of Regina Spektor or Kate Nash and the doe-eyed innocence of Daniel Johnston.
On this rainy Wednesday in the heart of London, Imbruglia was effortlessly cool yet entirely unpretentious as she chatted affably to the crowd between songs with a confidence that suggested standing alone on a stage is the most natural and comfortable thing in the world for her to do. Indeed, though playing with a band brings a certain clout to her tunes and turns them into feisty little garage numbers, to see them performed with just an acoustic guitar was a wonderfully intimate experience. In fact, the songs gained plenty from being stripped down. Lettuce and Anarchists is a track that one would expect not to work when forced away from its punky format (after all, that’s the point of it), but, pleasingly and slightly surprisingly, it found a whole new dimension, and worked perfectly as an acoustic number. Equally, throughout the set Imbruglia’s vocal was allowed to breathe without its nuances battling for prominence with the clash of drums and the cacophony of electric and bass guitar. In short, this thirty-minute show proved that Laura Imbruglia absolutely blossoms as a solo artist.The ace in her pack is certainly It’s Getting Worse, which is the kind of unabashed paean to love that the scenester bands with angular hair would be too scared to write. “You hide magnets in your arms and whirlpools in your eyes/The sky is grey all day, then I see you and it turns blue,” she sang with a kookiness that once again steered her firmly in the direction of The Moldy Peaches at their most honest and tender.
Talking of kookiness, the fanciful My Dream of a Magical Washing Machine prompted a trip into delicious irreverence. Any song which boasts the lyrics: “Instead of swishy noises, I could listen to the Pet Shop Boys,” is more than okay by this reviewer. The triumphant set was ended with Tear Ducts and impressive new song Wouldn’t Be Surprised, before the Australian songwriter made way for two acts whose painfully affected performances only served to prove what an unassuming and genuine talent we had just witnessed in Miss Imbruglia.
She may be a long way from home, but there’s a wit, charm and eccentricity about Laura Imbruglia that may well see England fall in love with her. After all, this is an artist whose music could just as easily have emerged from London’s indie scene or New York’s anti-folk scene as from sunny Australia.
There are few things better than free tickets to a music festival that is indoors and a ten-minute walk from your front door. While others spent their ANZAC Day playing two-up and getting off their faces on grog, I went along to The Essential Festival to check it out:The Essential Festival is a one-day event in the heart of Sydney, held at three adjacent venues right next to Central Station. At the end of a hectic festival season, the nature of it made for a refreshing change, and the fact that it was taking place in cosy pubs and venues make it perfect for the time of year, considering the rainy winter weather outside. First up was singer/songwriter Erin Marshall (above). Erin is a delight in that she falls nicely into her own little niche. Essentially, it is pop music - and by that I am being complimentary; after all, we all know that pop music at its very best is the finest music of all. Unlike much of the mush you will hear on your local commercial radio station though, Erin's songs her songs are honest and not in the slightest contrived. In front of a decently-sized crowd (especially for 2.15pm on a Wednesday afternoon), she played a familiar set of tunes that, at their most upbeat, were cruisy pop waving in the direction of folk, while, at their most bare, were folk waving in the direction of cruisy pop. Either way, the set was always nicely stripped down, with just a couple of acoustic guitars allowing the songs to breathe, and showcasing her note-perfect and dextrous vocal. I have said before that, with her pleasing aethetics, charisma and song-writing ability, she has the potential to go far. Her catchy tunes are well-suited for the mainstream yet nicely interesting at the same time.Following Erin, there wasn't much that appealed other than a few games of pool in the pub. I had already given The Hate Game a wide berth, having reviewed their rather obnoxious yet strangely foot-tappy pop too many times already, and the thought of watching the likes of PoMoMoFo and Dappled Cities Fly again was, without wishing to be disrespectful, not as tempting as whacking a few balls around a table with my friends. I did catch five minutes of Regular John, who played hair rock, and not the good kind. Rather than the grubby, beardy, haven't-washed-in-a-month rock that would have enticed me, they were more of the 'perfectly straight hair grown specifically for headbanging' variety. I left after two songs.
Next up, someone who got it absolutely spot-on. Laura Imbruglia (above, and yes, she is her sister) whacked out punchy, kooky little anti-folk tracks about washing machines that double as jukeboxes and, between songs, did a chucklesome impression of Richard Marx singing Hazard. The diminutive singer was playful in a cheeky, tomboy way with a crowd who, due to her height and the lack of a stage for her to stand on, couldn't see her. There is something about Imbruglia that is quite wonderful, and her performance was of such a high standard that it had elements of Regina Spektor and The Moldy Peaches about it. It would be a shame if her delightful weirdness was overshadowed by her surname. This is a songwriter who deserves to be heard.Next, I headed to the Gaelic Club to check out a band I was very excited to see. Earlier in the day I had avoided Teenagersintokyo as I would avoid the plague, as I was more interested in watching the band that they can only dream of being, Young and Restless (above). This is a band that knows how to put on a show. Frontwoman Karina prowls the stage, dancing, sweating and screaming, while her four male band members make an awesome noise. Imagine if YYYs had gone harder rather than more melodic after their first album and you wouldn't be far away from the sound that Y+R belt out. OK, so all of their songs sound the same, and I wouldn't want to rush out and buy their records, but as a live show it was absolutely awesome. During the last song, Karina repeatedly yelled 'only bitches talk shit' as she surfed over a crowd which included the aforementioned Miss Imbruglia. While Imbruglia's show was good enough for her not to have to get any tips from what she was watching, I sincerely hope that The Hate Game and Teenagersintokyo were paying attention. They could learn a lesson or two from this electrifying band.
While Children Collide belted out their tunes with an impressive Nirvana-esque energy, it was time for this reviewer to head home, having happily hurdled yet another decent festival unscathed.
LAURA IMBRUGLIA 
